1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sheet conveying apparatus and an image forming apparatus, and more particularly relates to a sheet conveying apparatus provided with a conveying guide in a door portion of an apparatus body, and an image forming apparatus including this sheet conveying apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the related art, image forming apparatuses such as a copying machine and a laser beam printer transfer a toner image, formed on the surface of a photosensitive drum, to a sheet and conveys the sheet to a fixing apparatus for heating and fixing, to obtain a predetermined image. Therefore, for example when paper jam (hereinafter also referred to as “jam”) occurs during conveyance of the sheet, a user needs to open a conveying guide arranged inside an apparatus body and remove the sheet remaining in a conveying path.
Meanwhile, in recent years, with reduction in size of an apparatus body having been desired, the image forming apparatus has been required to effectively make use of an inner space therein. For this reason, there are an increasing number of image forming apparatuses configured such that the conveying guide is provided in a door portion of the apparatus body while jam recovery in the conveying path can be performed by opening the conveying guide provided in the door portion (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2008-63060).
Incidentally, among the image forming apparatuses which perform jam recovery by opening the conveying guide provided in the door portion, there are those having the function of holding the conveying guide so as to be kept in an open state even when the user releases his or her hand (hereinafter also referred to as “independent holding”) in order to improve maintenance properties and the like.
However, when the conveying guide is independently held for the jam recovery, for example, the user may intend to close the door portion without cancellation of the independent holding after completion of the jam recovery, which might cause breakage or damage of the conveying guide. Further, for example in the case of closing the door portion while closing the conveying guide after cancellation of the independent holding of the conveying guide, when the conveying guide comes into contact with the apparatus body before the conveying guide is completely closed, the conveying guide might be subjected to damage or the like.
Thereat, the present invention provides a sheet conveying apparatus capable of suppressing damage of a conveying guide provided in a door portion of an apparatus body, and an image forming apparatus including this sheet conveying apparatus.